LAHORE: Punjab Minister for School Education Murad Raas on Monday launched an enrollment drive in the province and announced a target of one million student admissions before summer vacation.

He was addressing a press conference at the Quaid-i-Azam Academy for Educational Development.

He said the enrolment campaign would continue throughout the year because the majority of students had left schools due to eight months closure in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

He said district education authority officers and school councils were given the responsibility to complete the targets and those failed to complete their targets would have to face strict action.

He said strict action would be taken against the public and private schools administrations for not implementing coronavirus standard operating procedures (SOPs).

He appealed to the parents to take measures to help the government implement coronavirus SOPs and do not send their children to schools without wearing masks.

Mr Raas added there were 120,000 public and private schools in the province and they did not have capacity to monitor every school whether it was implementing SOPs or not.

“I need support from everyone, especially, from the media to point out schools violating coronavirus SOPs and they would by force ensure its implementation,” he said.

He said there were around 375,000 teachers under the school education and they did not assign any role in the enrolment campaign. “We have carried out an online e-transfer policy for teachers and started a pension online process to facilitate the teachers,” he said.

He said the department was working to start developing online ACRs and promotions systems to remove all pressures from teachers so that they could focus on teaching children.

To a query about the collection and submission of B-form, he said the school education did not get B-form in the past and for the first time they were enrolling the students and getting their forms and 86 per cent of the students had submitted them.

The minister said Nadra would verify all these B-forms and one month time was extended for submission of remaining forms. “We will for the first time tell the exact number of enrolled and out of school children,” he said.

He said earlier they did not have any concrete/complete data of enrolled and out of school children and there were speculations about the number of enrolled and out of school children.

He added the government was working to update the Private School Act-1984 and no one from the previous governments had tried to update the act till this date.

“We have consulted stakeholders including private schools owners and administration and proposed several amendments on their recommendation,” he said.

He said the proposed amendments were sent to the law department and later it would be forwarded to the Cabinet Division for approval.

“We are updating the private school act as we don’t have any personal stakes while the previous government did not do so because of having personal stakes,” he said.

Published in Dawn, February 2nd, 2021